How DTC brands can benefit from in-game video advertising

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands and DRTV and Infomercial advertisers need to be looking for new mediums to promote their products and services, especially as TV continues a decline. In recent years, many DTC brands have diversified their video advertising efforts to include social ads, but as social media ad costs rise is there another medium that DTC advertisers could benefit from?
The global in-game advertising market is on track to grow by $3.54 billion by 2025 and it is a medium that DTC brands should explore. At first glance, advertisers might assume that the demographics of gamers are mostly teen males who do not fit their target market. However, mobile gamers actually skew more female. Overall the mobile game market is 60% female and 40% male. In terms of age demographic more than 20% of mobile gamers are over 50 and 39% are between 21 and 35. This provides an enormous potential for DTC brands.
There are a few types of video ads that can DTC marketers can take advantage of within mobile games:

Interstitial Ads
Interstitial video ads are full-screen ads that typically appear in-between game level and allow players to skip the ad after about five seconds depending on the game. Since these ads don’t interrupt the player’s gaming experience, they typically generate high impressions and conversions.
Reward-based ads
Reward-based video ads follow a “prompt, opt-in, reward” structure in which players choose to play the ad in order to receive a reward. After watching the ad the player is rewarded with another life or some form of in-game currency to help them continue playing the game. Most gamers prefer this ad format and find it the least disruptive.
Both player and advertiser benefit from reward-based ads. The player is rewarded and the advertiser only pays for the ad if the player watches the entire ad. Additionally, since the ads are generally watched to the end in order to receive the reward DTC brand advertisers have increased brand awareness and recall. Reward based ads receive higher user engagement than interstitial ad formats, resulting in a higher return on ad spent.
Ads can be purchased on a CPA, CPM or CPC basis and the costs rival more expensive platforms like Facebook.
Although not top of mind for DTC marketers, in-game video advertising is definitely a channel that should be considered because it holds enormous potential to reach their target market affordably, increase brand reach, and get conversions.
